Ahipara and Shipwreck Bay

Surf's Up

A raw and rugged energy that refuses to be ignored - this best describes Ahipara, at the southern end of Ninety Mile Beach.

An iconic seaside village and surfie's paradise, it's home to architecturally designed houses and salty old baches that sit side by side on its windswept coast. Ahipara is a place where surfers ply the waves at Shipwreck Bay and the views are quite simply unforgettable.

A few days here and you begin to feel a kinship with the pioneering gumdiggers of the late nineteenth century and the hardy occupants of Tauroa Point, who make a living gathering seaweed and reside in salt-encrusted shanties without running water or SKY TV.

Flanking the beach is a rugged headland of enormous sand dunes and rocky outcrops that call forth the inner hoon: "Come ride a quad bike," it cries, and "go let rip".

Quad-biking tours explore the Ahipara Gumfields Scenic Reserve; a wild and remote area behind Shipwreck Bay littered with the remnants of ancient kauri forests, old gumdigger's huts and some 250 hectares of trenches, dams, aqueducts and 4WD tracks.

Ahipara's unspoiled sands, at the beginning of Ninety Mile Beach, is the perfect place to burrow bare feet into the sand in search of tuatua for a simple seaside feast back at the bach.